Almas
Almas is the de facto "capital city" of piracy in the Attamat Islands (if a band of lawless cutthroats can be said to have any real seat of government), and sits on the far south end of the island of Bianni, out of the reach of that island's Turlonan governors. It is here that the Wheel of Thirteen meets to discuss and vote upon matters important to the sea dogs of the archipelago. It is also here that the Whisperers League coordinates their vast network of spies and informants across the region and the world. Although Almas is the seat of the Wheel of Thirteen and the Whisperers League, it should be noted that the vast majority of the town's inhabitants have no idea that this is the case. The ruck and run of the town (the fishermen, shipwrights, and the like) know only that they live in a very dangerous place, and that they must be able to defend themselves if they want to survive. Even a large percentage of pirates know Almas as just another pirate town, which is exactly how Jonas Grills likes it. Let any pirate hunters and would-be heroes focus their attention on targets like Porto Calvas, which certainly looks like a more likely spot for the Wheel's seat of power. Government As the seat of power for the Wheel of Thirteen, Almas is nominally ruled by consensus of the Wheel's members, who act as a sort of criminal city council. While this may be true on paper, however, the truth of the matter is that Almas is ruled with an iron fist by Jonas Grills. Although Almas has very few laws, they are enforced with a fascist authority; Grills does not tolerate the slightest challenge to his power. This creates some odd legal quagmires that often baffle outsiders. For example, it is perfectly legal to murder someone and relieve them of their purse in Almas. After all, if the pirate in question really wanted to keep his money or his life, he would have defended himself better!. However, it is a crime punishable by death to knowingly cheat one of the dockside merchants. The economy of Almas depends entirely upon trade, and if the merchants go, the gold flow available to Grills and his organization would be seriously reduced. Economy Almas's economy is almost exclusively derived from the buying and selling of swag and booty taken by pirates on their cruises. Merchants of all stripes crowd the docks, eager to appraise and purchase anything from grain shipments to rare jewelry, mechanisms, and weapons. These merchants take their illegally purchased goods and, through various underworld contacts throughout the world, carefully re-sell the pirate cargoes so that they appear to come from legitimate mercantile sources. The bottom-rung merchants might only distribute their black market goods through one or two fences, leaving a trail of evidence that dedicated investigators could follow with minimal exertion. However, the most skillful and influential merchants channel purchases through so many different contacts across the world that only the very powerful or the very lucky would have a chance at discovering their origins. As it lies on the island of Bianni, Almas technically lies in territory claimed by Turlona. However, the effective control of the Turlonan governors in Port Arcos does not extend much further south than Folgana. Fleets are occasionally sent to Almas, but they have always been turned back by the city's enhanced antidirigible weaponry. Military Being several centuries old (as legend has it) has given Jonas Grills a keenly-developed sense of paranoia, which extends to the fear that Turlona, the Aveiran Navy, or any military force, for that matter, might grow ambitious and attempt to overthrow him. As such, Almas has little in the way of a permanent army. Should the town ever come under attack, Grills's formidable thaumaturgical prowess combined with the dozens of pirate ships that are in port (or at least the general vicinity) would be a powerful deterrent to any would-be pirate hunters. To defend from the Turlonan air force, a battery of ten arcane antidirigible cannons, designed by Grills himself, are set in emplacements throughout the town. To keep order within the city itself, Grills has created an order of guards called the Nighthaunts. Dressed in forbidding black uniforms and armed with truncheons and longswords, these guards have been specially hand picked and subjected to a regimen of conditioning, both mystical and mundane, that renders them almost completely loyal to Jonas Grills himself. Category:Locations Category:Locations in Bianni Category:Locations in the Attamat Islands Category:Settlements Category:Settlements in the Attamat Islands Category:Towns